2025 Computer Science Capstone Symposium

The Computer Science Department senior capstone presentations will take place Friday, May 9th and Saturday, May 10th in Xavier 201 on the Pacific Lutheran University campus.  If you’d like to join the capstone Zoom session, please email Assistant Professor Jeff Caley at caleyjb@plu.edu.

Friday, May 9th

2pm – Vehicle Detection and 3D Pose Estimation
Braden Brooker (BS), Hailey Ledenko (BS)

Vehicle detection and 3D pose estimation are critical challenges for ensuring safety in autonomous driving. While companies like Waymo have demonstrated the potential for safe autonomy, their reliance on expensive and resource-intensive depth-sensing technologies such as LiDAR limits scalability and accessibility. Our work addresses these cost and computational barriers by relying solely on monocular camera data to estimate the 3D position and orientation of vehicles—similar to Tesla’s vision-based autonomy approach. At the core of our system is EgoNet, a deep learning model that combines heatmap regression for 2D vehicle keypoint detection with a fully connected network that lifts these key points into 3D space. The resulting spatial data is processed using ROS and visualized within a simulation environment. EgoNet’s key innovation lies in its ability to produce accurate 3D pose estimates, even for vehicles that are partially occluded—a challenging edge case in which many models struggle. Upon its publication at CVPR 2021, EgoNet outperformed prior state-of-the-art methods when tested on the KITTI dataset, a widely recognized benchmark for autonomous vehicle perception. Our work leverages EgoNet’s high precision 3D spatial inferences and uses these model output to render a 3D simulation of RGB keyframes using RViz. These successful reconstructions provide a strong foundation for real-time obstacle avoidance systems, moving us closer to scalable and safe autonomy without the need for expensive sensor suites.

2:30pm – NA
Yuta Shimazu, Data Science (BS)

Break

3:15pm – HoopIntel
Stacie Spahr (BA), Ashley Akamine (BS)

HoopIntel is a machine learning-powered application aimed at automating basketball game analysis to support scouting and coaching decisions. Our project focused on developing a pipeline to detect the court, identify players, and track their movement across frames using object detection and re-identification models. While we were not able to fully complete the end-to-end system for generating scouting reports, we successfully trained and tested individual components, including a YOLO-NAS object detection model and a MobileNetV3-based Re-ID model with Faiss similarity search. These models lay the groundwork for a scalable solution that can reduce the time coaches spend manually reviewing film and provide insights into player tendencies and team strategies.

3:45pm – Enhancing Quality of Service (QoS) Monitoring for Smart Tracking Devices
Clara Gordon (BA), Yu-Ri Hahn (BS)

This project, developed with Codepoint Technologies, focuses on improving Quality of Service (QoS) monitoring for smart tracking devices used in asset management. These devices generate vast amounts of data, with battery health being a critical factor affecting system reliability. We developed a custom API plugin to automate data entry into a Docker-managed database and created a function to calculate key battery performance metrics, such as rate of change. The processed data is visualized using the Google Charts API, allowing users to track performance over time. Throughout the development process, we collaborated closely with the technical lead to ensure alignment with the project’s objectives. The project underscores the importance of battery health monitoring in real-time tracking systems and lays the foundation for predictive maintenance and more efficient asset management.

Saturday, May 10th

10am – Fredrick
Roderick Percival (BA)

Fredrick is a discord bot and website combo that puts multiple server’s messages in one database, allowing for searching across multiple servers at once. This search can be done on any server that the discord bot is connected to, and all the messages from that respective server are available for view from any other connected server. Utilizing discord’s slash command feature, the user can see what parameters are available for use, and it displays instructions of how the parameters are intended to be used. The website shows a live feed of all of these messages with the same level of control as the discord slash command implementation, but without the limitations of discord’s client, allowing for a more pleasant viewing experience that can also be filtered. Both are focused on being simple to use, allowing someone with no experience with database languages to query with modular prompts that can be added and removed with an easy to use interface.

10:30am – NA
G. Alvarado (BA)

Break

11:15am – Roko’s Basilisk
Evan Archer (BS), Zane Davenport (BA), Christopher Brice (BA), Wasif Ramzan (BS)

Roko’s Basilisk is a roguelike first-person shooter game that seeks to redefine player immersion by offering an adaptive, procedurally generated experience tailored to individual playstyles. Through the use of a custom rule-based AI we’ve created, the game employs constraint satisfaction techniques to analyze a number of performance statistics gathered at the end of each level. These statistics are then processed to identify player strengths and weaknesses. This analysis guides the dynamic construction of subsequent levels, ensuring that each level challenges and evolves alongside the player. In conjunction with this, we have also created a behavior tree to guide the enemy combatants the player will be facing. These enemies will also have their own stats adjusted in accordance to the player’s performance throughout the game. The result is a uniquely personalized gameplay experience where no two players, nor gameplay sessions, are ever identical. Roko’s Basilisk not only entertains but also explores the cutting-edge potential of artificial intelligence in game design.

11:45am – NA
Eric Sun (BS), Vincent Allen Sison (BS), Andrew Sandoval (BS)

LUNCH

1pm –  Zenith Racers
Brody Willard (BS), Emmanuel Obikwelu (BS), Robert Marti (BA)

Zenith Racers is a high-speed, anti-gravity racing game developed using Unity. The project focuses on delivering an engaging experience with unique gameplay mechanics, such as vehicles defying gravity and clinging to 3D tracks, alongside features like customizable difficulty levels and multiplayer support. This game integrates Unity’s physics engine and Blender-designed assets to craft visually stunning tracks and vehicles. The goal is to provide an intuitive, easy-to-learn experience that is challenging to master, catering to both casual and competitive players.

1:30pm – NA
Luke Coleman (BS), Ryan Mitchell (BS)